A DVD Review of...
Image (C) BBC
Genre: Comedy
Cast: John Cleese, Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs, Connie Booth, Ballard Berkeley
Synopsis: Inept and manic English hotel owner and manager, Basil Fawlty, isn't cut out for his job. He's intolerant, rude and paranoid. All hell frequently breaks loose as Basil tries to run the hotel, constantly under verbal (and sometime physical) attack from his unhelpful wife Sybil, and hindered by the incompetent, but easy target, Manuel; their Spanish waiter.
Film Review: America may have invented the 'sitcom' and proliferated it into hundreds of different styles - dominating the field for decades. But in the late 70's and early 80's it was the British who refined the format and showed off two things and the ONLY two things which matter to make a good sitcom - brilliant writing and performers. From the ultra violent "The Young Ones" to the clever WW2 set "Allo Allo", some of the best TV comedy ever made came out of Britain in that era. This isn't to say US comedy writers aren't as good, rather the problem which still exists with US sitcoms of today is that its "written by committee" - a large group of people who have to churn out a lot of content (around 22 episodes a year) and who re-write the many gags of the shows to please everyone and not offend anybody (especially advertisers for the network) resulting in fun but very 'safe' and not particularly hilarious humour, despite it being very difficult work
Now compare this to classic British sitcoms - many of these penned by only 1-2 writers, each show doing only six episodes per series (with anywhere between 1-3 year gaps between series), the budgets of many of these not even paying for one US screenwriter's per episode salary, and many utilising a mix of humour styles rather than relying on simple sarcastic dialogue. Thankfully US writers of the last few years are breaking out of the formulaic mold of the 'sitcom' with the likes of "Larry Sanders", "Sex and the City" and of course "The Simpsons" and "South Park", but three of those four are cable shows and so the main US networks still have a lot to learn. There's a great article about this at The Guardian comparing how the same joke in a UK show is changed for the US version. Of all Brit sitcoms there's two real highlights though, "Blackadder" and "Fawlty Towers" - both of which now have come to DVD.
TV and Film school students are taught from the start to make their hero characters easily sympathetic so the audience can identify with them much better. What makes these two shows work is that the writers are smart enough to know that rules like that are for the most part horseshit - the lead characters in this are absolute bastards, pricks of the first calibre. In the case of Basil Fawlty we have an almost psychotic man who insults his wife at nearly every chance he gets, physically abuses the Spanish waiter serving under him, is rude and inconsiderate to practically everyone and is a total pompous dickhead who gets hopelessly caught up in messy situations of his own doing - and THAT is why he's funny, the writers take him right to the edge of being both a dickhead and a victim of his own misfortune at the same time throughout most of the show's runtime without ever going too far (thereby obtaining the maximum comedy value).
Cleese invests an amazing amount of energy into a role demanding physical comedy, slapstick and witty dialogue - and over the course of a mere 12 half-hour episodes has created what remains his most identifiable and unforgettable character. Matching him is Prunella Scales as Basil's far more grounded and intelligent wife with hair that would make Marge Simpson proud, Sachs who cops the brunt of Basil's feet and fists in every episode, and Booth as the voice of reason amongst all the mania. There's also British celebrity cameos galore worth watching out for.
There's not really a lowlight of the show that I can recall, though the highlights are too many to count. From "The Psychiatrist", to "The Wedding Party", to "Gourmet Night" the episodes and sharp and strong. The most famous though is of course "The Germans" which not only includes a great moose gag, but in its final 6-7 minutes created both Cleese's famous Hitler impersonation and the line "don't mention the war" which if you mention to people on the street they'll know immediately what your talking about. In twelve episodes no other sitcom on Earth did what this one did, and even now 25 years later its only some of the fashions within the episodes that have aged - the laughs are just as good as ever. This is high farce and British comedy at its very best. - Garth Franklin
| "Fawlty Towers: The Complete Series" DVD Details In Brief (Region 1) Rating: R Runtime: 500mins Versions: 4:3 Pan & Scan Sound: Dolby Surround 2.1 Language/Sub-Titles: English, French, German Audio: Director's Commentary Track Documentaries: "A Visit to Torquay" Featurette, 2-minute video of remaining structure, Interviews with cast members (Cleese, Scales and Sachs) Clips: Clip Montages, Outtakes, BBC Trailers Other: Cast Biographies, "Who's Who" Guest Star Guide Region 1 vs. Region 4: Standard NTSC/PAL Differences. |
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DVD Review: Much like the "Blackadder" DVD set this is a quite well stocked collection with some good extras compensating for the aged quality of the print. Its only in standard fullscreen, no surprise there, though the quality isn't that much better than tape sadly in terms of both audio and video (despite it being 'digitally remastered' as the box says), this is one series that really demands a proper (ergo expensive) remastering but sadly we didn't get it with this set. The commentaries are also mostly a mixed bag as there's no production audio in the background and lots of long gaps of just breathing noises, at times some good stuff comes out though.
Onto the extras and there's quite a lot here - arguably the best being an hour-long recent interview with Cleese about pretty much every aspect, character and episode of the series. Scales and Sachs do short interviews as well about their time on the show which are quite fun and its interesting to see how they've changed over the years. Also quite good is the cast and guest biographies which not only list each person's work but have an audio read out of a sort of press kit style bio of each person (about 20 in all). "A Visit To Torquay" takes us to various hotels in the real life English area to talk about Donald Sinclair (the real life inspiration for Basil Fawlty) for a fun and trivial but ultimately pointless doco. There's a somewhat sad two minute home video of the famous exterior of Fawlty Towers which has been mostly destroyed by fire, there's a fun but way too short 90-second segment of outtakes, three 10-minute montages of clips from the series focussing on different themes, and finally trailers for the likes of "Wallace & Gromit" and "French & Saunders". An impressive collection worth getting, though one hopes the BBC would've gone the extra step and forked out more cash to clean up the episode print quality. - Garth Franklin
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